D. CONCLUSION
III. THE SINO-MONGOLIAN SPLIT
4. Alliance Split: 1963–1964
The deterioration of the alliance continued until 1963–1964 when rhetoric between the two countries became entirely confrontational. At this point, the alliance had effectively ceased to exist. Only after Mao’s withdrawal from Chinese politics following the disastrous Great Leap Forward and the fall of Khrushchev did PRC officials make a last-ditch attempt to save the relationship. In November 1964, Zhou Enlai visited Moscow to explore ways to salvage the alliance.77 Yet the Soviet Defense Minister
reportedly encouraged him to overthrow Mao.78 Interactions like this only verified
suspicions of both the West and the Soviets, which prompted China to take an isolationist role in the international community and effectively terminate the Sino-Soviet alliance.
In the aftermath of the alliance’s dissolution, tensions continued to mount. During the Cultural Revolution, enmity between Moscow and Beijing flared, motivating both countries to increase military force strength along their mutual boundaries. Border incidents in 1969 nearly led to a full scale war. At the peak of the crisis, Moscow even
73 Middleton, Duel of the Giants, 49. 74 Ibid., 44.
75 Chen, Mao’s China and the Cold War, 78–79. 76 Middleton, Duel of the Giants, 47.
77 Chen, Mao’s China and the Cold War, 84. 78 Ibid.
considered launching a preemptive nuclear strike against China.79 Following this near
catastrophe, China sought rapprochement with the United States. Initial courting eventually led to state visits by Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon who laid the framework from which China and the United States could construct a strategic partnership balancing against the Soviet Union.80
C. ANALYSIS OF THE SPLIT
The following section will draw upon the history of the Sino-Soviet alliance and attempt to determine the causal factors in its deterioration and splitting. It examines the roles of great power politics, political ideology, and national sovereignty. In doing so, it finds that the PRC’s alliance with the Soviet Union deteriorated as a result of shifting perceptions of ideological threats from Moscow. The final split resulted, however, from Soviet impatience with China’s ideological disputes and Moscow’s effective termination of the alliance.
1. Great Power Politics: Balance of Threat
As Walt claims, the most apparent catalyst for an alteration in threat perception would come from changes in balance of power.81 This viewpoint would insinuate that
either an overwhelming rise in Soviet power or a substantial drop in U.S. power would change China’s threat perception.82 Yet the United States greatly increased its power
position over the course of the decade while the Soviets made relatively steady gains. Despite this, Beijing reevaluated its alliance with Moscow and saw the Soviets as a greater threat. This policy reversal reveals how threat measured by aggregate, proximate, and offensive power had a cursory effect on the Sino-Soviet split. During the 1950s, these balance-of-threat factors should have made China perceive an increasing danger from the United States that would drive it closer to Moscow. Instead, the opposite occurred.
79 Ibid., 240. 80 Ibid., 275.
81 Walt, “Why Alliances Endure or Collapse,” 158.
U.S. and Soviet aggregate power experienced a moderate rise that should not have readjusted Beijing’s threat calculus. From 1950–1960, U.S. wealth, as represented by total population, urban population, steel production, and energy consumption, increased at a moderate pace. For example, its population rose from 152 to 180 million while iron and steel production increased from 87 to 90 million tons.83 Meanwhile, the Soviet Union
did not achieve any unforeseen leaps in these sectors either. The total population of the USSR increased from 180 to 214 million and the urban population jumped from 33 to 51 million.84 Moscow’s iron and steel production more than doubled from 27 to 65 million
tons while primary energy consumption tripled from the equivalent of 273 to 629 million tons of coal.85 Despite these rises, China still had a wide margin advantage in population,
which climbed from 571 to 657 million by the end of the decade.86 Additionally, China’s
urban population doubled by 1960 as it reached 65 million.87 Iron and steel production
leaped from 606,000 to 18 million tons while energy consumption skyrocketed from 29 to 291 million tons of coal.88
During the same timeframe, changes in U.S. and Soviet proximate power should have solidified Beijing’s threat perception of Washington—but did not. U.S. proximate military power rose while Soviet proximate military power decreased. Following the Korean War, upsurges in the defense spending and garrisoning in Japan, South Korea, and Okinawa amplified U.S. proximity.89 Additionally, its proximate power increased
through the establishment of various U.S.-led alliances across the region. These included the 1951 defense treaties with Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, and the 1953 treaty with South Korea.90 It also included the formation of the Southeast Asian
83 “National Material Capabilities V4.0,” Correlates of War Project, accessed August 23, 2013, http://www.correlatesofwar.org/datasets.htm. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid.
89 Dunbabin, Cold War, 101.
Treaty Organization (SEATO) in 1954.91 In contrast, Moscow had withdrawn the Red
Army in Mongolia away from China’s periphery.92 This decrease in force coincided with
an increase in economic accessibility. After the signing of the Sino-Soviet alliance, Ulaanbaatar became a connecting bridge between the two powers.93 The planning and
construction of a Trans-Mongolian Railroad exemplified this as it acted as a trade route and a transit line between Beijing and Moscow.94 These changes in Soviet and U.S.
proximate power failed, however, to bolster the Sino-Soviet alliance.
Additionally, U.S. offensive power increased exponentially. The United States tripled its military spending within two years of the Sino-Soviet alliance’s signing.95 By
the end of the decade, Washington spent over $45 billion on defense annually.96
Meanwhile, the Soviets and Chinese increased their military spending at a similar rate, which did little to change their power gap over 10 years. At the start of the decade, the Soviet Union spent over $15.5 billion on its armed forces.97 This spiked at $29.5 billion
in 1955 and dipped for two consecutive years before climbing again; in 1960, it reached nearly $40 billion.98 Comparatively, China spent $2.5 billion on its military in 1950.99
Six years later it spiked to 5.5 and then rose to $6.7 billion by 1960.100 Moscow’s
military expenditures more than doubled over the 1950s, but China spent at nearly the same rate.101 Yet the new U.S. advantage in offensive power still failed to fortify the
Sino-Soviet alliance.
91 Ibid.
92 Robert A. Rupen, How Mongolia is Really Ruled: A Political History of the Mongolian People’s Republic, 1900–1978 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1979), 74.
93 Ibid. 94 Ibid.
95 “National Material Capabilities V4.0.” Correlates of War Project. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid.
Nuclear weapons could challenge China’s population advantage; however, U.S. advances in the 1950s still did not strengthen the Sino-Soviet alliance. Both Washington and Moscow had nuclear capabilities before the signing of the Sino-Soviet pact although the United States had an advantage in numbers throughout the decade. From 1950–1960, the United States increased its inventory from 299 to 18,638 weapons.102 The Soviets, in
comparison, increased their nuclear inventory from five to 1,627.103 Although both
nuclear arsenals represented a substantial threat to a non-nuclear China, the significantly larger U.S. inventory still failed to strengthen China’s commitment to balance with the Soviets. Mao dismissed the destructive potential of these weapons against population centers and military targets.104 Instead, he labeled U.S. nuclear strength a “paper
tiger.”105
2. The Role of Political Ideology
Contention over political ideology became the driving factor that altered Beijing’s threat perception, deteriorated the alliance, and led to Moscow’s splitting. Signs of Beijing’s ideological discontent with Moscow became apparent within months after the signing of the 1950 alliance. During the run-up to the Korean War, Stalin acted pragmatically with his commitment of military support to China. For the sake of national interests, he made vague pledges for weapons and air support to encourage Mao to shoulder the costs of war106 and then expected China to pay for the materiel
afterwards.107 Mao became disenchanted with Stalin’s apparent neglect of communist
solidarity and saw himself as morally superior.108 This led to what Chen Jian describes as
102 Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, “Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories, 1945–2013,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 69, no. 75 (2013), 78.
103 Ibid.
104 Khrushchev and Crankshaw, Khrushchev Remembers, 470. 105 Ibid.
106 Christensen, Worse than a Monolith, 97–98. 107 Chen, Mao’s China and the Cold War, 61. 108 Ibid., 59.
the “conceptual and psychological” beginnings of the split.109 Although the Korean War
made the PRC more dependent on Soviet loans and aid, it gave the Chinese an ideological superiority complex.110
Also, Walt notes that “when each regime’s legitimacy rests on ideological principles that prescribe obedience to a single central authority, they will inevitably quarrel over who should occupy the leading position.”111 As such, the communist
movement called for a single authoritarian leader and this resulted in a clash between the PRC and USSR. Mao’s attempts at undercutting Soviet leadership during the 1956 Polish and Hungarian uprisings reflected this mindset. During a meeting between Zhou and opposition leader Wladyslaw Gomulka, the Chinese attempted to coax the Poles into proposing Mao as leader of the Communist bloc.112 Additionally, Mao made a secret
offer to the anti-Moscow Yugoslavia to co-sponsor an international communist meeting to highlight Soviet ineptitude.113 As Khrushchev reflected, “Mao would never be able to
reconcile himself to any other Communist Party being in any way superior to his own within the world Communist movement.”114
Additionally, Walt claims that “when differences arise, the different factions will regard their own views as entirely justified and the views of their opponents as heretical.”115 For example in 1956, Khrushchev began the policy of destalinization at the
Twentieth Party Congress. Yet Mao had adopted Stalin’s centralized planning, rural collectivization, heavy industry, military development, and authoritarian leadership.116
109 Ibid. 110 Ibid., 61.
111 Walt, “Why Alliances Endure or Collapse,” 163. 112 Chang and Halliday, Mao: the Unknown Story, 405–406. 113 Ibid., 406.
114 Khrushchev and Crankshaw, Khrushchev Remembers, 462. 115 Walt, “Why Alliances Endure or Collapse,” 163.
Denouncing Stalin could only delegitimize Mao’s own position, undermine his ability to consolidate his leadership, and threaten his visions for continuous revolution.117
Khrushchev recalled Mao’s dilemma.
The Chinese knew that they were in a dangerous position in the world Communist movement after the Twentieth Party Congress. They understood the implications for themselves of the Congress’s repudiation of personality cults, autocratic rule, and all other antidemocratic, anti- Party forms of life. Stalin was exposed and condemned at the Congress for having had hundreds of thousands of people shot and for his abuse of power. Mao Tse-tung was following in Stalin’s footsteps.118
Also ideological differences arose on how to approach the West.119 Mao believed
that the international communist movement should ardently spread revolution. Meanwhile, Moscow remained unwilling to accept Mao’s confrontational policies.120
Instead, the Soviets promoted peaceful coexistence. During a September 1959 visit to Beijing, Khrushchev attempted to promote the importance of coexistence with the West.121 To this, Mao claimed that the Soviets had become revisionist and averred that
the Chinese would continue sponsoring revolution.122 By the early 1960s, the ideological
differences became widely advertised. For example, an August 1963 statement from Beijing announced, “It is our proletarian internationalist duty to point out that they [the Soviet leaders] have now betrayed the interest of the Soviet people and the entire socialist camp.”123 The PRC also noted the ideological threat from the Soviet Union because
“since the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), its leaders have tried, on the pretext of ‘combating the personality cult,’ to
117 Ibid.
118 Khrushchev and Crankshaw, Khrushchev Remembers, 471. 119 Walt, “Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power,” 21. 120 Middleton, Duel of the Giants, 41.
121 Chen, Mao’s China and the Cold War, 83. 122 Ibid.
change the leadership of other fraternal Parties to conform to their will.”124 These
polemic quarrels reflected how the ideological gap between Moscow and Beijing significantly widened and resulted in the increased threat perceptions that would lead to an alliance split.125
3. The Role of National Sovereignty
Some historians contend that Chinese sensitivities towards national sovereignty, based on territorial disputes, doomed the Sino-Soviet split from the beginning. Beijing’s loses to Moscow through several treaties to include the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk, the 1858 Treaty of Aigun, the Tehcheng Protocol, and the Treaty of Ili heated nationalist sentiments within the PRC leadership.126 Additionally, China’s junior role in the Soviet
alliance exacerbated this.127 These historians credit hundreds of years’ worth of animosity
and suspicion between two great powers with nationalist goals as making the alliance inherently unsustainable.128
Yet nationalism and defense of national sovereignty still fall short in explaining the discourse between China and the Soviet Union. Many analysts consider the submarine basing issue as a dispute over the control of national assets and indicative of China’s sensitivity for sovereignty that underscored a victim mentality fatal to the alliance.129 Yet this issue occurred late in the 1950s, when tensions in the alliance had
already elevated. Also, antagonistic nationalism cannot explain the cooperative relationship today’s Russian Federation shares with the PRC. As seen with border
124 “The Leaders of the CPSU are the Greatest Splitters of our Times: Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU,” People’s Daily and Red Flag, February 4, 1964.
125 Haas, Ideological Origins, 4.
126 Middleton, Duel of the Giants, 38–39. 127 Ibid.
128 Alfred D. Low, The Sino-Soviet Dispute: An Analysis of the Polemics (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1976), 16.
agreements and joint military exercises in the twenty-first century, nationalism and historic animosities exacerbated by Soviet policymaking have not eternally shaped perceptions of offensive intentions.130
D. CONCLUSION
China’s balancing alliance with the Soviet Union spawned from threat perceptions of the United States based primarily on political ideology. Both the Soviets and Americans had demonstrated their impressive power ratios in 1950. Washington represented, however, an ardent anti-communist force in the world. This led PRC officials to align with the Soviets against the United States. After 1956, however, China’s alliance with the Soviet Union deteriorated because of changing perceptions of ideological threats from Moscow. This factor altered China’s view on threat balancing, led to polemic disputes with the Soviets, and provided the motivation for Moscow to firmly abandon the alliance by 1963–1964. In turn, the split led to a competition for allies in the communist world that would shake China’s relations with other friendly countries.
130 “China and Russia Sign Border Deal,” BBC, July 21, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7517380.stm.
III. THE SINO-MONGOLIAN SPLIT
A. INTRODUCTION
This chapter focuses on the break between the PRC and the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR). Although these two countries did not have a formal alliance, they both joined the Soviet camp by the early 1950s, which made significant cooperation between Beijing and Ulaanbaatar implicit and fitting to the parameters of this thesis. Besides from the informal nature of this arrangement, it proved different from the Sino-Soviet relationship in other ways. Unlike the Sino-Soviet split, ideological differences proved of cursory importance. Instead, Ulaanbaatar’s perception of Beijing during their communist- era alliance fell under the shadow of historic mistrust and underlying threats to Mongolia’s national sovereignty. By the mid-1950s, China’s ideological conflict with the Soviet Union resulted in Mongolia having to choose between the two. In this way, the involvement of great power competition played a heavy role in the Sino-Mongolian split. As relations between Moscow and Beijing deteriorated, both attempted to contend for Ulaanbaatar’s loyalty until 1963 when China abandoned attempts to reorient Mongolia.131
The Sino-Mongolian alliance’s deterioration resulted from a combination of worsened PRC-Soviet relations and Ulaanbaatar having to choose between a supportive Soviet Union and a historically threatening China. The final split resulted, however, from China’s failed attempt to compete with Moscow and it eventually seeing Mongolia as an inseparable conduit of Soviet power in the region. This chapter will proceed by briefly covering the history of this informal alliance followed by an analysis of great power politics, political ideology, and national sovereignty in the split.
B. HISTORY OF THE ALLIANCE: AMITY, DETERIORATION, AND SPLIT
1. Relations Leading to Alliance: pre-1949
Throughout the early twentieth century, a sovereign Mongolia became dependent on Moscow for aid and protection from Chinese re-annexation. Mongolian suspicion of China originated from its subjugation by the Qing dynasty from 1691–1911.132 During
the chaotic fall of the dynasty from 1911–1912, Mongolia separated from China and then sought Russian support in maintaining its separate status.133 For the next 10 years,
domestic infighting and Chinese warlordism kept Mongolia from exercising full autonomy. In 1921, however, the Soviet Union, as a successor to the Russian Empire, sponsored the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP) and established the world’s second communist regime, the MPR.134 Yet Chinese businesses and immigrants
still had a stronger presence in Mongolia. In 1925 for example, 400 Chinese firms operated within the country compared to only 50 Russian firms.135 To remove this
influence, Ulaanbaatar and Moscow drove away the majority of Chinese immigrants during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Reflecting this policy, Chinese laborers accounted for 63 percent of the work force in 1929 but shrank to 10 percent by 1932.136
Over the next 20 years, Mongolia remained in the Soviet fold and became effectively penetrated by Moscow. In 1941 for example, Cyrillic replaced the traditional Uighur script.137 Additionally, primary, secondary, and university education conformed
to the Soviet model.138 Russian became a second language as Russian-speaking schools
132 Bat-Erdene Baabar, Twentieth Century Mongolia (Cambridge, UK: The White Horse Press, 1999), 93, 102.
133 Radchenko, “The Soviets’ Best Friend in Asia,” 3.
134 Morris Rossabi, Modern Mongolia: From Khans to Commissars to Capitalists (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), 31.
135 Ibid., 226. 136 Ibid. 137 Ibid., 32. 138 Ibid.
for the elite multiplied throughout Ulaanbaatar.139 Aside from sponsoring the Mongolian
National University in 1942, the Soviet Union also educated the vast number of Mongolian elites in its own universities and those of its Eastern European satellites.140
Meanwhile, various factions in China harbored aspirations to reacquire their lost province. During this time, Chinese leaders on both sides of the political spectrum made re-annexation their policy. In the 1930s, Mao Zedong gave interviews with journalist Edgar Snow in which he asserted his intention to retake Mongolia following communist victory in China.141 Chiang Kai-shek also sought to reincorporate Mongolia. In the
closing days of World War II, he petitioned his allies to acknowledge China’s claim for re-annexation. Stalin refused Chiang’s request and at the Yalta Conference in 1945, Chiang acquiesced to Stalin and Roosevelt’s insistence on a Mongolian plebiscite.142 In
October of that year, nearly 100 percent of the Mongolian population voted for independence from China.143 Yet a 1947 border dispute along the Mongolian-Xinjiang
border gave Chiang the excuse to renounce the plebiscite and Chinese forces infringed on Mongolian borders in the Baytagbogd region.144 With Soviet assistance, Mongolia
repelled this invasion, while the Nationalist government accused Mongolia of attacking the disputed city of Peitashan.145 Altercations with the Nationalists were short-lived,
however, as CCP forces soon swept Chiang from the Chinese mainland. On 8 October 1949, Mongolia cut its ties with the Nationalist government and recognized the PRC.146
Also during the late-1940s, the CCP and the MPR began to collaborate militarily.